The present invention relates to an improved method and system for updating email addresses.
Users of electronic mail (xe2x80x9cemailxe2x80x9d) often change their email address. They may change their email address because they get a new job, because they change their home Internet access subscription to a new Internet access provider, or because they change their network configuration by moving their email account to a different server. When other users (called xe2x80x9csendersxe2x80x9d) try to send an email to a person who has changed their email address (called a xe2x80x9crecipientxe2x80x9d), they normally get an obscure error message from the network that has no indication of the recipient""s new email address. There is currently no Internet-wide directory that can be used to find the recipient""s new email addresses.
Senders instead rely on system administrators to find the recipient""s new email address. Some system administrators maintain email forwarding for previous users of the organization""s system. For example, when a message comes in to the organization""s system for a recipient that no longer uses the organization""s system, the system administrator manually sends the message on to the user""s new email address on the user""s new system, instead of (as is normally done) sending the message to the user""s mailbox on the organization""s system.
Relying on a system administrator of a previous organization""s system has three problems. First, it operates at the pleasure of the system administrator at the recipient""s old site, and there is no guarantee that all system administrators will be sufficiently competent to set up and maintain mail forwarding, especially since servicing former users will typically take a lower priority than servicing current users. Second, some organizations may not allow system administrators to dedicate computer resources to helping former users. Third, if the message recipient has changed his or her email address multiple times, then the message will have to be forwarded multiple times. Each time the message is forwarded it causes delays, uses up system and network resources, and increases the risk that the message will not reach the recipient.
Embodiments of the present invention provide a method and system for forwarding email messages that overcomes the deficiencies of the prior art.
Embodiments of the present invention provide a network-based method and system for forwarding an email message to an updated email address. After a recipient changes his or her email address, the recipient sends information regarding the updated email address to an address-change server used in conjunction with the present invention. The address-change server store the updated email information in its database. When a sender wants to reach a recipient whose email address has changed, the sender transmits an email message to the address-change server. The address-change server retrieves the recipient""s new email address and forwards the new address to the sender. The sender, in conjunction with the sender""s email program, forwards the old email message to the recipient""s new email address. In another embodiment, the sender""s email program automatically retrieves the recipient""s new email address from the address-change server""s message and programmatically forwards the sender""s old email message to the recipient""s new email address.
Notations and Nomenclature
The detailed descriptions which follow are presented largely in terms of methods and symbolic representations of operations on data bits within a computer. These method descriptions and representations are the means used by those skilled in the data processing arts to most effectively convey the substance of their work to others skilled in the art.
A method is here, and generally, conceived to be a self-consistent sequence of steps leading to a desired result. These steps require physical manipulations of physical quantities. Usually, though not necessarily, these-quantities take the form of electrical or magnetic signals capable of being stored, transferred, combined, compared, and otherwise manipulated. It proves convenient at times, principally for reasons of common usage, to refer to these signals as bits, values, elements, symbols, characters, terms, numbers, or the like. It should be bourne in mind, however, that all of these and similar terms are to be associated with the appropriate physical quantities and are merely convenient labels applied to these quantities.
Useful machines for performing the operations of the present invention include general purpose digital computers or similar devices. The general purpose computer may be selectively activated or reconfigured by a computer program stored in the computer. A special purpose computer may also be used to perform the operations of the present invention. In short, use of the methods described and suggested herein is not limited to a particular computer configuration.